Spirit Tenderizes Hearts

When preparing a nice steak sometimes the meat needs to be tenderized.  Because the best pieces of meat are filets of muscle fiber, those internal fibers can become bunch and taunt, making the steak tough.  In order to compensate for this, the piece of meat is beaten, smashed, or cut so as to loosen up the bunched muscular fibers and make the steak more tender to eat.

A hardened heart is much like un-tenderized steak.  It is tough and taunt, unfit for use and in need of tenderization.  Moreover, a hard heart affects every aspect of a person, body, mind, soul.  This is particularly true in regards to the intellect that is directly affected by a hardened heart.  Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, speaks directly to this.

Paul indicates that a hardened and calloused heart breeds futility in the mind (Eph. 4:17-18).  Logically, this makes sense.  If God is who He is (merciful, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, faithful, transcendent, supernatural, true, and gracious, et al), then a heart that is hardened to God would be hard to His traits, meaning that life would seem utterly futile, vain, and barren.

Luckily, God, through His Son and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, has made a way to tenderize hearts that are tight and hard.  Additionally, when our hearts become tenderized through the process of sanctification it similarly affects are whole person: we will think differently, behave differently, and relate differently.

As Paul says, believers should put off our old self, in its futility of thinking, and put on the new self that is being renewed in its mind so as to think the thought of God (Rom 12:2; Eph. 4:20-24).  This is a beautiful proposition, that God would tenderize our hearts so that we be transferred from futility to eternity and to transform our minds.  Let us then press on in humility and repentance to let the tenderizing of the Spirit breakdown the callouses of our hearts so as to sanctify us in God!